


it's not a place but a person that is home.

by ohyellowbird



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam still goes to Harvard but from there the plot and his friends are different, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Humor, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:51:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21823486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohyellowbird/pseuds/ohyellowbird
Summary: People didn't expect that Adam Parrish, straight-A student and reliable friend, would have a boyfriend like Ronan Lynch.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 20
Kudos: 559
Collections: Pynch Secret Santa 2019





	it's not a place but a person that is home.

Adam Parrish was exactly the type of person to thrive in college. Ambitious, smart, resourceful. His professors took notice of him from the very start, commenting on the quality of his essays and his insightful participation in class discussion. The work itself was difficult and time-consuming, but Adam was capable and after escaping his parents and a literal demon, being bogged down by studying and assignments didn’t inspire the same kind of stress that he sees most of the other students wearing. In a dorm room nearly the size of his apartment above St. Agnes and three square meals a day, he excelled, taking his place at the top of his classes. 

With that kind of reputation, Adam’s peers began to take notice of him as well. His circle of friends grew effortlessly, mowed down to nothing after graduating Aglionby, with Blue and Gansey and Henry gone on their adventure. As a star pupil, kids started inviting him to the library to study, or jumping on his inclusion in their group projects. They would want to grouse over pop quizzes with him on the way to class or on the weekend, over lunch in the cafeteria. As they learned him, these friends came to expect his thorough class notes, his particular way of taking apart problems in order to solve them, and his dry sense of humor. 

What he realized one weekend in late October was that people did not expect Adam Parrish, straight-A student and reliable friend, to have a boyfriend like Ronan Lynch. 

Adam wasn’t stupid. He knew that he and Ronan looked incongruous together, like brown shoes and black pants, but he had attributed a large amount of the staring they’d received in Henrietta to backward thinking when it came to boys holding hands in a small town. 

Here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a college town in a blue state, that assumption was tested and swiftly rejected, by none other than his new grouping of friends. 

Ronan came to visit Adam at Harvard after nearly two months of separation. Their parting at the Barns at the end of summer was wretched and led them both to the realization that, though weekend visits sounded like the only way to make the distance bearable, they wouldn’t be able to survive so many more goodbyes.

In those first few weeks away from Virginia, Adam had been crippled with missing Ronan. He’d grown so used to his smell and his warmth, his wicked smile when Adam was drawing near to kiss him and his cutting laugh when Opal painted Adam in muddy handprints or dropped a frog into his lap. Harvard felt like a fresh start but at the beginning of the semester, he could only dwell on the idea that this new life he was building for himself had come at the expense of the only person who’d ever really loved him.

It was a dramatic feeling, and much too heavy to carry between classes and by the time Ronan made the 8-hour pilgrimage (that’d ended up taking him only 6 and a half) Adam was more settled in his decision to leave. Which wasn’t to say that he didn’t succumb to violent butterflies when Ronan called late that morning to say, “Put on your shoes and warm up the shitbox. Phone says I’m twenty minutes out.”

They met at a pizza place, not so reminiscent of Nino’s but ripe with nostalgia nonetheless. Ronan was already parked when Adam pulled into the lot and found a space. He waited until Adam was right up next to the car door and knocking on the glass before cracking the driver’s side window. “No solicitors,” he said cooly, but was grinning from ear to ear, his grip tight around the top of his steering wheel.

Adam was shocked by a surge of giddiness at the sight of Ronan outside of a phone screen. His own smile was slow-starting but spread just as wide. “Get out of the damn car, Lynch.”

Ronan did. 

They hugged, hard, and Adam found himself having to fight down the silly urge to cry. It’s just that his senses were suddenly assaulted with Ronan, the smell and feel of him, like home and love made tangible. And then the taste of him, their chins turning in, mouths like magnets, fixing together. 

Ronan Lynch was leather and Redbull and boxwood from the Barns and Adam didn’t want to stop kissing him, but they were in public and he was hungry. “It’s good to see you,” Ronan breathed, in that voice he used for no one else, bladeless and low. Adam nodded into the side of his neck, fingers scuffing over the bite of Ronan’s buzzcut, and then they parted. There would be ample time for kissing later; his roommate, Brandon, had a block of classes until late into the afternoon.

Except for the game of footsie Ronan was playing wherein he had bullied Adam’s leg into reaching below the table so that he could press their ankles together, lunch was uneventful.

They got avocado on their pizza, more because they always did with Gansey than because they really enjoyed it, and filled each other in on what didn’t make the cut for phone calls. Declan’s met someone, and not another Ashley this time, and Opal was learning how to knit from the women at 300 Fox Way when she wasn’t home in Lindenmere--Ronan had a holey beanie she’d made for Adam in the backseat that he needed to be reminded of.

Adam kept his own updates about school short, even though Ronan always set aside his contempt for structured learning when it came to Adam talking about his classes. He had more to say about extracurriculars anyway, telling Ronan about the Botany club he’d joined and the Sugar Maple bonsai living in his dorm. He had also started meeting with a group every other week based around spiritualism but thus far most of the discussions had centered around yoni eggs and the bohemian apparel store, Free People.

On the way back to their cars, the plan to reconvene on campus and take each other apart while his roommate was still out, Adam heard a stunned voice by way of his good ear. “Adam Parrish?” He turned, his cheek brushing up against the inside of Ronan’s arm from where it was draped over his shoulder to see Amelia Downing, a short girl wearing tortoiseshell glasses and three cardigans. She sat next to him every Tuesday and Thursday for Biology but was looking at him now like she wasn’t sure she had the right person. It took Adam an embarrassingly long moment to realize why that was: the 190-pound barnacle he had sealed against his left side names Ronan Lynch.

“Amelia,” he nodded, exhaling a stilted laugh. “Yeah, hi.” Once she had confirmation that she’d been right about his identity, she slowly ventured closer, her gaze all but dragged away from Adam’s face. Right. “This is my boyfriend, Ronan. He’s visiting for the weekend. Ronan, this is Amelia. We have class together.”

After a second longer staring, Ameilia reanimated enough to raise her hand for them to shake hello but Ronan just looked at it. Adam felt him lean imperceptibly further onto Adam’s shoulder. It was rude, but not one of them appeared surprised by Ronan’s lack of manners. Amelia’s expression was stuck on the same look of naked curiosity that Adam had first spotted her with.

She stared at Ronan and he stared right back. Only when Adam cleared his throat did her attention swivel, face heating up. “Er, nice to meet you,” she said awkwardly, looking at Adam but talking to Ronan. 

Ronan, predictably, said nothing. He made a sound, like an affirmative grunt, and then Adam was saying goodbye. Approaching their cars, he found his voice, entirely nonplussed by the encounter. “So what, she didn’t know you were into dudes?” he said, pulling open Adam’s door for him. 

Adam ducked out from under Ronan’s arm and dropped into his car, turning to look past him to where Amelia had disappeared inside of a local ramen shop. “I guess,” he replied thoughtfully, drawing down his seatbelt. Though, for some reason, that assessment didn’t feel quite right. 

Suraj Patel was the next of Adam’s friends to run into him with Ronan. Suraj was passing through the quad in the opposite direction that they were walking and this time it was Adam who saw his friend first. He gave a small wave with the hand not loosely linked with one of Ronan’s and Suraj’s face lit up with recognition, and then, matching Amelia’s from the parking lot, surprise. “How’s it going, Parrish?”

Adam let go of Ronan’s hand preemptively, hoping that he might use it to shake with this time--there was a box from the Barns wrapped in his other arm. Ultimately, it was a foolish gesture because of course Ronan didn’t move to introduce himself, and because Suraj seemed to be resolutely avoiding looking at him. 

After checking to make sure that Ronan wasn’t wearing one of his particularly murderous expressions, Adam didn’t understand. While his having a boyfriend was understandably surprising for an acquaintance, Suraj and Adam had grown close during his short time at Harvard. They were legitimate friends and Adam had mentioned Ronan to him on more than one occasion. “Hey. Are we still on for tomorrow night? I might drag him along.” He inclined his head sideways.

Suraj’s gaze stumbled then onto Ronan. “You must be Adam’s boyfriend,” he said, his eyes sticking to Ronan’s face, shoulders, Doc Martens and then running away.

“That’s right,” Ronan told Suraj. Adam cut him a look to dial it down which resulted in Ronan tearing open a truly disconcerting smile that was full of too many teeth and leaning forward. “Good to meet you...”

“Suraj,” Adam and Suraj both supplied, the latter having taken a proportionate step back. He nervously gripped the canvas strap of his bookbag and turned his attention back to Adam. “To answer your question, yes. Dorian and I will be there by 7:30.” 

Looking very uncomfortable, Adam mercifully let him go with a, “Cool, see you then,” before he and Ronan continued on their way to the dorms. Ronan’s fingers immediately reached for his hand but he slapped them away, glaring openly. 

“What?”

Adam’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “You know what. Do you have to terrorize _everyone_ you meet?”

“It’s not my fault he looked like he was having war flashbacks,” Ronan retorted, giving up on Adam’s hand and shifting the box he’d been holding into both arms. “It wasn’t me who took his lunch money.”

“No,” Adam agrees, “Just someone exactly like you.”

Ronan’s grin was a shark’s, and then it was gone. “He called you Parrish.”

“And?”

“_I_ call you that.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “You also call me nerd, runt, asshole. The list goes on.” He was counting off the pet names on his fingers. Ronan’s expression darkened, his eyes on Adam’s hand.

He spoke lowly, shifting suddenly into the Ronan that Adam had first met at Aglionby, a sinister, looming thing. “Is somebody fucking calling you an asshole here?” His nostrils flared.

“God, Ronan,” Adam exhaled, shaking his head. “You’re impossible. Wait for me here.” He needed to swing by his English professor’s office hours to pick up a book they’d been discussing on Romanticism.

It took less than ten minutes but by the time Adam emerged from the building, Ronan, where he leaned against the brickwork with his box, had conjured a small gaggle of female students. 

“So, you’re a farmer?” one girl was asking, after a loud pop of bubble gum. “You don’t look like a farmer.”

“And you don’t look like a student of Harvard,” Ronan replied blandly, his gaze dropping pointedly to her sheepskin Ugg boots. Adam was immediately offended on her behalf but instead of drenching him in her iced latte, she laughed, and so did her friends.

“You’re funny, farmer boy,” another girl simpered, eyeing Ronan hungrily, tracing his facial features and the snarl of black ink that peeked around the column of his throat.

“No shit.”

Adam joined them, hovering out of place. He earned a few glances from the girls, but that was it until Ronan locked the box from the Barns under his arm and hauled Adam in for a sudden kiss. Then they were all looking at him, _gaping_ really.

Adam blinked and Ronan grinned, eyelids dropping to half-mast, their faces still close. He didn’t give a shit about their audience; he wanted them to see. “Now show me your room already, nerd” 

Adam’s mind was turning over the odd run-ins he’d had with Ronan this afternoon during the walk to his dorm and inside, but once they were safely shut away from any more prying eyes, all speculation melted away in the face of finally being alone together.

Ronan abruptly dropped the box he’d brought in and manhandled Adam against the closed door, smothering Adam’s instruction to, “be easy.” These rooms had notoriously thin walls.

“Been too long,” Ronan breathed gruffly, his hands everywhere at once, mapping out Adam underneath his sweater, smoothing around his ribs and up the planes of his back, reaching above Adam’s collar to hold the nape of his neck.

Adam knew acutely how long it’d been: 54 days. He felt every moment of time spent apart in the way Ronan was kissing him now, in the way his body responded to it. Starved. Needy. 

They kissed until lips were raw with stubble burn and clothes had become an active nuisance. Adam drew away to catch his breath, having to shut his eyes against the way Ronan was looking at him right now, his light blue eyes hazy with want, his mouth slightly parted.

“Lay down,” Adam suggested, but before Ronan could comply he pulled Ronan’s leather jacket down his arms, hiking up the hem of his shirt after. Adam needed to see him and Ronan took the hint, undoing his boots and belt and stepping out of his pants on the way over to Adam’s narrow bed. 

He laid down on his stomach, face turned sideways with his cheek pillowed on his folded arm so that he could still look at Adam. And for a long, indulgent moment, before approaching the bed and settling between Ronan's calves, Adam simply looked back. Ronan was now wearing only a pair of dark boxer briefs that likely cost more than all of Adam’s textbooks for the semester, and his muscles were shifting with impatience, his back rising in a steady rhythm of restraint. Adam didn’t care. It’d been so long since they’d seen each other that he wasn’t going to be hurried, not even by his own arousal. 

Ronan was broad and strong, his waist a taper above the firm swell of his ass. His body was satin draped over steel, his skin like milk except for the bloom of his tattoo that bled out to the edges of his ribs, over the tops of his shoulders, reaching down to cover the dimples above his waistband. 

Adam trailed a finger down the crease between his shoulder blades, taking a labyrinthine path through his tattoo until he could smooth both palms against the soft, dark hair on the backs of Ronan’s thighs.

Suddenly it was all too clear why Amelia and Suraj had reacted the way they did when confronted with the identity of Adam Parrish’s boyfriend. They were merely sharing a thought that he’d had for longer than he cares to admit.

_Ronan was hot._ Like, it was legitimately ridiculous, how hot Ronan was. Adam knew that he himself was interesting looking, that his strange features and wiry frame had thoroughly captured Ronan’s attention and Blue’s, to a lesser degree, but Ronan is the kind of attractive that people couldn’t help but notice. The universal kind of good-looking. Even before things started between them, Adam could see the effect Ronan had on other people. Heads would turn. Eyes would linger. Girls would whisper. Over a year together and Adam’s heart still squeezed whenever his mind slowed down enough to take stock that Ronan was _his_. Straight teeth in a mean smile and eyes like clear water shaded by thick, black eyelashes. A jaw that could sharpen knives. When people looked at Ronan Lynch’s shaved head and snarl and scarred arms they heard warning bells, but they also saw Vogue and Rolling Stone. No amount of posturing and bravado could conceal how objectively gorgeous he was.

“Did you have an aneurysm back there? Do I need to call the school nurse?”

Ronan’s barb was dull-edged and lazy, half-muffled by the meat of his forearm. Adam knew his face was warm but still swatted Ronan on the ass with the back of his hand. “You’re so annoying.”

“If you take any longer, my dick is going to fossilize.”

“God forbid,” Adam deadpanned, but his reverie had been successfully punctured, replaced with that same drive that’d been present when first walked in the door. He scooted further back so that he had room to pull down one side of Ronan’s underwear and unceremoniously sink his teeth into the top of a buttcheek.

Ronan swore, a melodic swirl of filth, and turned his face into the pillow. His skin where Adam had bitten him blushed up immediately, a pretty abstract of pink marking the pale, which gave Adam pause. “How do you not have a tan?” he asked, still bent forward, putting his mouth on Ronan’s flank before connecting a few more kisses up his spine. “You’re outside at home constantly.”

“It’s called sunscreen, Parrish,” Ronan said, like he didn’t regularly claim that Adam was a genius.

“Ohhh,” Adam replied lamely, like he wasn’t one, more or less having crawled completely over Ronan during his exploration of Ronan’s back. He planted a kiss behind Ronan’s ear, letting his lips buzz against his cropped hairline. His knees pressed into the bed while his hands coasted up Ronan’s sides, smoothing over the topography of muscle and bone. It lined his pelvis up with the underside of Ronan’s ass beautifully and he ground down, thrilling at the harsh puff of breath his tease elicited.

Adam was still fully dressed but could feel the warmth of Ronan’s body underneath him _everywhere._

“Are you done fucking around yet?” Ronan snapped, his own hips angling down, his patience spent. Adam wouldn’t be surprised if he were bucked off soon; Ronan Lynch was not known for being temperate.

Adam exhaled the ghost of a laugh. “We have time,” he promised, eyeing the clock on the wall, but his hand was already sneaking downwards, between his own legs to slide into the back of Ronan’s underwear. 

Ronan’s face turned so that he could peer at Adam with one eye, the iris already more black than blue. His gaze was soft though he said nothing, only breathing stiffly when Adam traced a fingertip over his hole. “I missed you, you know,” Adam sighed, his weight shifting toward Ronan’s hip. In reply, Ronan lifted his chin, revealing his mouth so that Adam could dip and kiss him. It was slow and searching until Adam pushed inside and Ronan’s mouth fell away.

He was seizing heat and Adam moaned, rutting absently as he worked his finger deeper, one eventually becoming two. 

Ronan’s arms were still folded underneath his head for a few more minutes. He let Adam stoke him into a blaze, Adam’s hand up to its wrist still down the back of Ronan’s boxer briefs. It was when Adam was adjusting the angle to ease in a third that the remnants of Ronan’s calm melted. In one fluid motion, his upper body twisted so that he could grip Adam loosely underneath his jaw, the pair of them breathing heavily, and kiss him once more. Ronan was never great with words, always better with actions, and his kisses meant many things. This one said, _I love you. I want you. Hurry the fuck up._ Funny, that’s what Adam’s dick was saying too.

He slid more wholly off of Ronan and Ronan turned, putting his back to Adam’s front while also ripping down his boxers and hurling them to the other half of the dorm. “My roommate is really going to appreciate that,” Adam commented, but his voice was the opposite of light and teasing. It was a ruin, more breath than sound as he whipped off his own sweater and peeled open his slacks. His cock sprung out, smearing against Ronan’s ass. 

“Your roommate can eat shit,” Ronan growled, reaching back over his shoulder to fasten a fist in Adam’s hair. His palm swept over Adam’s deaf ear, but the lack of sound wasn’t disconcerting when it was just him and Ronan. He simply raised up with his elbow to keep his other ear from being completely pressed to the pillow and steadied a hand around his cock, nudging open Ronan’s cheek and pressing in as soon as he caught on Ronan’s rim. 

Ronan punched out a breath and Adam bled something of a sigh, guiding himself deeper, pulling Ronan back by the hip until they were flush together. His tanned fingers looked nice against Ronan’s skin, his thumb settled back against the pink mark his mouth had made earlier. A few inches higher and he’d be stroking Ronan’s tattoo. 

How long Adam had thought about this since he’d been away at school, he and Ronan tangled together. Actually experiencing it again was overwhelming, though It took Ronan only a few seconds to get his head above water after the initial wave of having Adam inside of him. “Come on, Parrish,” he panted, and Adam bent one leg, finding some leverage and rocking forward into Ronan. The greedy drag from Ronan’s body made it hard to go slow, but he wanted this to last. He’d spent two months remembering it all wrong. No matter what angle he thought of them together at, memories from their summer at the Barns couldn’t conjure up even half of the feelings that actually fucking Ronan inspired. 

Adam’s slacks, bunched around his thighs, must have been rough against Ronan’s skin but he didn’t seem to care. All he wanted was _more_ and _come on_ and _like that, yeah_. Being spooned up behind him allowed Adam to work at their sanity in long, deep thrusts but after a few minutes of it he was sick of not being to see the faces Ronan was making. He pulled out, and Ronan cursed at him, but after ridding himself of the rest of his clothes he was back, aiming to push Ronan down onto his back before Ronan beat him to it. He had other ideas.

“Yeah, there,” Ronan nodded, a hand on Adam’s chest and one around his shoulder, coaxing Adam to sit with his back against the wall. He then wasted no time in swinging a knee over Adam’s waist and sitting on Adam’s dick, reaching back behind himself to line them up. 

His cock slid in all at once and they both groaned, Adam’s hands snapping to Ronan’s hips and Ronan dropping forward, holding Adam’s cheek with his thumb on his chin. They kissed sloppily as Ronan rode him, needing to part frequently in order to hammer out air, their breathing coming out in harsh cuts. Ronan was tight and searing and so goddamn gorgeous and Adam wasn’t going to last. He wrapped his clean hand around Ronan’s cock to bring him off too but Ronan nudged it away so Adam lifted it instead, plucked his fingers over Ronan’s bottom lip for Ronan to open up. 

And that was how they came, with Adam’s fingerpads touching the wet slip or Ronan’s tongue and Ronan never biting down, spurting over Adam’s stomach wordlessly while Adam punched out a groan and shut his eyes, body ravaged by the pulsing of his orgasm.

When they were spent, just a sweaty bundle of limbs, Adam watched as Ronan slumped sideways, ready for a nap, and got up to find a towel.

While he was in the bathroom, a voice broke into the other room. Oh god. Brandon. Adam quickly fastened the plush bath mat around his waist and opened the door. “Oh god,” he said, voicing his horror as his mind reeled for something else to say.

Brandon Nguyen, Adam’s roommate who was supposed to be in class until 4:15, was unexpectedly back early. He was standing in the doorway staring at Ronan, who was blessedly waist-deep in Adam’s duvet, and Ronan was staring right back. 

“Hi,” Ronan yawned mildly after a long beat of agonized silence, sticking an arm out over the edge of the bed in greeting because clearly this was the introduction of the day that most warranted physical contact. 

Brandon gaped at Ronan’s proferred hand and his massive tattoo and the freshly fucked look of him, and then back at Adam wearing a bath mat. His expression wasn’t the same as Amelia’s or Suraj’s, or like any of the girls who’d been fawning over Ronan while Adam was retrieving a book about poets, but at this point, Adam couldn’t help himself.

“Ronan, meet my roommate Brandon,” he said, fully aware that nothing was going to clear the cubic ton of awkwardness that had just been dumped into their dorm room. “Brandon, this is my boyfriend, Ronan. He’s hot. I get it. There’s no need to stare.”

Brandon’s shock took on second shade at Adam’s comment, and then a third because Ronan had suddenly started laughing like a madman, clutching his chest and shaking with the force of it. Brandon gave them one more harrowed look each before quietly easing the door he was still holding shut, probably never to return.

Adam took a moment to let himself be towed under by the humiliation of it all before chucking the bath mat into his hamper and climbing back into his bed, under the duvet with Ronan. “Well, that was horrible,” he grimaced, burying his face in Ronan’s shoulder. He’d forgotten the towel from the bathroom for them to clean up but it didn’t matter; Ronan had already used Adam’s sweater. Great.

“All your friends seem real nice, Parrish,” Ronan grinned, clearly tickled by the entire ordeal. Not just Brandon either, but Amelia and Suraj too. 

Adam propped himself up with an elbow to scowl at Ronan from higher ground. “You knew why they were being weird,” he accused. “Because you’re stupidly good-looking. I hate you.”

“Whatever,” Ronan shrugged, absently tracing out the line of Adam’s jaw, pressing his nail into a large freckle just to look at the shape it leaves behind. “You’re into it.”

“Correction. Everyone is into it,” Adam said flatly, his eyes already trailing from Ronan’s flushed face and chest down into the darkness of what’s under the duvet.

Ronan put a hand out to catch Adam’s chin, demanding his attention. “You’re an idiot. They don’t look at me like I’m another species because I’m hot. It’s because next to you, I am. You’re a fucking beautiful genius, sauntering around campus in your pressed slacks and oxford shoes and then they find out you’re dating some backwoods hillbilly who tracked cow shit across state lines and into your dorm room. It’s a natural reaction.”

“You didn’t,” Adam breathed dangerously, his entire dissertation about Ronan’s attractiveness disappearing in an instant. 

Ronan’s grip on his chin tightened, his face breaking into a flickering smile that stabilized as he pulled Adam in to kiss him. “_Tamquam._ Don’t look down.”


End file.
